ghost stares at the ceiling, chest heaving in a harsh pant; sweat ice on his clammy flesh and soaked into the sheet he restlessly kicks away.
ears still ringing, his fingertips blindly drift down to trail along his vivisection scar. he half-expects blood to smear in their wake. his own line of solomon, who ordered him split in twain; half of him given to a grieving mother and half left with the grieving to be.
just for both his broken halves to be rejected.
what did it make him that his mother grieved him more than she loved him? that she begged to be relieved of him more adamantly than she begged to receive him? why did his worth spill out with his drawn blood? why was his pain lesser than hers?
his hand flexes, digging into the raised scar like it’ll part beneath his fingertips to plunge into his mangled insides. no one knows the cruelty of reforming the halved; his name, his being, not nearly as important as his body when he was stripped from himself. no one knows the pain of healing and understanding losing pieces of yourself means losing your value along with them.
how many more pieces did he have to lose before he was halved once more? before his very presence incurred grief so strong it was better to be rid of him than cradle his bloodied remains?
did the infant fight himself? did he age always at odds with himself; his halves never truly whole? he hopes he wasn’t, that he was spared the loss of self; the fear that one may be welcomed over the other.
who will he lose when the inevitable comes? when he’s ripped apart again? simon? or ghost? is it better to be cursed with choice just like his mother or live with an aftermath chosen for him? does it matter if in the end, he convinces himself there was nothing of him left to lose?
his head lolls to the side and the wild buck of his chest slows. he watches johnny beside him, his face lax with the rare peace of sleep; his cheek squished against the pillow, his lips pursed as long breaths escape him.
johnny. soap. never torn asunder but two all the same.
he carefully reaches out and ghosts his fingers along the jagged scar on his chin. even in sleep, he presses into his bloodied touch. he’s never fled his half-flesh, never shies away from his gore as it spills unbidden from his cleaved torso. he holds on where his mother let him go; cups his stomach to hold his insides in place and never minds the blood that drips through his fingers.
simon will never let him become his own solomon and cannibalise himself. he will never let him question which half of him has more value; which pieces he can afford to lose before he’s cast aside.
I know we always talk about how Herondales love but once and how fiercely they love (which is true) but can we please acknowledge that a Blackthorn would do anything for love and their loved ones?
Have you ever thought about how tragic it is that Arthur was in love with Merlin, but he knew it? And that Merlin realised Arthur loved him and reciprocated his feelings, only the moment Arthur died?
It is so unfair, for the both of them. They weren’t able to act on those feelings, only read them from afar, and when they thought that maybe, just maybe, something about these feelings could have been done, it was too late.
They had waited and waited to see if they could stop, if they could stop yearning and wanting and longing and gazing, but the more they got to know each other, the more attached they became, they literally transformed into that bloody coin, two faces, you try to break one, it’s always going to have two sides. It does not matter in how many pieces you destroy it, Merlin is always going to be a part of Arthur, as much as Arthur is always going to be a part of Merlin, and the worst part of it all is that they both knew, they could feel it in the air with every grasp of their shoulders, with every almost death moment, with every smile and stare and feeble touch. It itched them, it was in the air that they breathed, it burned them until they were walking, as if they were dead already; they wanted to touch, to trace the edges of their bodies with their finger tips, carefully, as if they were infinite and could shatter with just a pull of skin, and they needed to share that warmth, as if they were one and that’s what broke Arthur the most, because he saw the reciprocation in Merlin’s eyes, every single day, he watched him watch him get undressed, both out of his clothes and out of his soul and bitterly, Arthur thought for those long ten years, “I wonder, wonder what it would be like to be enveloped by Merlin, what would happen if I pushed over that boundary line and discover something that is so much more than just my imagination, to feel Merlin’s arms around me and to be crushed under the weight of his desire, of his love, of his deepest secrets, and I would accept him, and profoundly, I would sink my fingers in my mind just to mould it into Merlin’s, like metal does under the hot flame, the same heated one that ignites me, when I stare at Merlin, and I just smile, punch him on the shoulder, tell him not to do anything stupid, and love him desperately.”
Arthur knew he loved Merlin, he craved him, but couldn’t do anything about it.
Arthur knew his life was a tragedy, since the moment it started.
truly i have been eating all of the theories/ideas lately about itfs cursing each other in some way shape or form at the end of the manga. i love twisted love stories i love a bittersweet ending i love living through the tragedy by enacting violence upon yourself and your loved ones OUGH it's so good
megumi whose main goals this entire series have been centered around yuuji. yuuji who is possibly already acting under the (beginning?) effects of a curse that megumi put on him ("start by saving me" - could also argue that "you've got it from here" isn't helping either kjsdbvjkdfb). megumi who watched yuuji die once and who refuses to see it happen again. yuuji who has witnessed up close everyone dear to him die and cannot lose megumi too....
just... the fighting and clawing and tearing at themselves and each other - desperate to stay together no matter what, even if it leaves them scarred and broken on the other side. because wounds can heal and they can fight to realign themselves with each other and the world, but none of it means anything if they're not alive and together
Just wanted to drop a line to say that I know folks are concerned about Michael unexpectedly not appearing in Nye tonight, but there is a good chance that all of this is related to technical issues/preparing for the live filming of the show that is set to be broadcast into cinemas tomorrow night. Michael also doesn't strike me as the type of person to miss work unless he absolutely can't help it, so the best thing at this point is to stay calm until we know more, rather than getting worked up for potentially no reason...
thinkign about how alone and unloved morty was for all his life and rick was the first time anyobdy ever put such an amount of intense attention and dependency onto him . and rick had a whole new family and losing them made him stop seeing the value in other people as a whole and morty was the one and first thing that woke him up
Obsessed with the death imagery around Sampson btw. Smelling like a dead rat, skulking like a ghost. The last survivor of a dead world, only he's barely surviving, certainly not living. The idea of these cultural ascetics is super cool but feels unfathomably sad to me.
(938 Seconds Per Second)
-slams hands on the table- YES.
YES.
Sampson is a detached limb of a dead body. He's a lopped-off finger dropped in formaldehyde and declared "See! The flesh persists!" of a body that has perished.
There are many ways to be tragically and beautifully dead in metaphor. Sampson is not that. Sampson rots. He's off-putting. He disgusts. He's isolated and alone and just... exists half-dead and half-rotten, has to exist, no one is allowing him the dignity to deboard the ship, and live the rest of his human life, and die a human death as the last death of his culture.
He dies more, rots more, when Carson steals and destroys his tome, because Sampson is nothing but the aimless vestige of his culture, alive only to keep it alive... and what is alive? No one is learning the culture. It's not spreading. It's not growing. It's not being studied and remembered and appreciated. ...It's just Sampson, whose only duty is to persist, and persist as long as long as long as possible... as if infinite persistence is the same as life...
Carson was not joking when he said Sampson would kill himself in the wake of the cargo getting ransacked. Carson was dead-fucking correct to think Sampson would kill himself. Those cultural artifacts are all that Sampson stays half-alive for. They're all he is. If they were stolen on his watch, ostensibly by his own fault... Carson was dead-fucking correct.
something to consider— i haven’t seen much SNW so not sure how canon to TOS ya’ll considering it to be but if they *gasp* make spock/kirk date or whatever, how would that end?
i can’t decide what’s funnier, either it doesn’t end and it implies that spock and kirk were dating the entirety of TOS or they break up, and have been trauma bonded exes for the entirety of TOS
viren starts to use dark magic -> he devotes himself to harrow because harrow makes him feel smart + powerful for his use of dark magic -> they commit atrocities -> harrow has a crisis of conscience in the face of his own mortality -> he tells viren to get to his knees and calls him a servant -> harrow dies -> viren devotes himself to aaravos because aaravos makes him feel smart + powerful for his use of dark magic -> they commit atrocities -> viren dies -> viren is revived -> he has a crisis of conscience in the face of his own mortality and decides to sacrifice himself for harrow's former kingdom and people -> in his final moments he gets to his knees and says "i am a servant". flawless arc honestly